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why do my flac files show different bitrates in winamp?

post #1 of 10
4/9/11 at 3:54pm
Thread Starter 

yes i use winamp. it does everything i need it to and i like the layout.

 

so anyway when i play my flac files each song shows a different bitrate usually somewhere between 700 and 1200 kbps.

 

i thought that flac uncompresses (plays) at standard cd quality 1411 kbps. so why is winamp showing these varying kbps ratings for each song?

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post #2 of 10
4/9/11 at 6:48pm

My whole library is FLAC, but none of them play at 1411 kbps.

 

I wouldn't worry about it - doubt you can tell the a sound difference between 320k mp3


 

 

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post #3 of 10
4/10/11 at 12:10am

FLAC is compressed, but still lossless. The bitrate depends on the level of compression. A higher compression, say 500kbps, sounds the exact same compared to a lower compression, say 1100kbps, although it takes more system resources to decode the higher compression. I hope that answers your question.


 

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post #4 of 10
4/11/11 at 4:48am

You get the 1411 kbps back after decoding. Winamp (and other players too) shows the bitrate before decoding.

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post #5 of 10
4/12/11 at 12:42am
Thread Starter 

thank you. i figured it was something like that. just making sure. and yes i use compression level 5 to maybe conserve some battery on my portable. they take up about as much space as alac 

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post #6 of 10
4/12/11 at 1:01am
Isn't FLAC a VBR codec?
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post #7 of 10
4/12/11 at 1:24am
Thread Starter 

nope. it's perfectly lossless.

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post #8 of 10
4/12/11 at 2:55am

From the FLAC website:

With FLAC you do not specify a bitrate like with some lossy codecs. It's more like specifying a quality with Vorbis or MPC, except with FLAC the quality is always "lossless" and the resulting bitrate is roughly proportional to the amount of information in the original signal. You cannot control the bitrate much and the result can be from around 100% of the input rate (if you are encoding noise), down to almost 0 (encoding silence).

 

Obvious the compression and therefore the bit rate you see varies with the complexity of the signal.

You will see differences between tracks but also within.

In essence VBR but lossless all of the time

 

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post #9 of 10
4/12/11 at 5:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Roseval View Post

From the FLAC website:

With FLAC you do not specify a bitrate like with some lossy codecs. It's more like specifying a quality with Vorbis or MPC, except with FLAC the quality is always "lossless" and the resulting bitrate is roughly proportional to the amount of information in the original signal. You cannot control the bitrate much and the result can be from around 100% of the input rate (if you are encoding noise), down to almost 0 (encoding silence).

 

Obvious the compression and therefore the bit rate you see varies with the complexity of the signal.

You will see differences between tracks but also within.

In essence VBR but lossless all of the time

 


Yes that's exactly what I was thinking about. The bitrate is adaptive just like in VRB MP3, except the bitrate can be as high as is required to keep the track 100% lossless. Sometimes WAV to FLAC barely reduces the size but sometimes it makes a great difference as well.
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post #10 of 10
4/12/11 at 7:42am

Yes it is.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kalston View Post

Isn't FLAC a VBR codec?

 

 

Variable bitrate and lossless are two different things that can go hand in hand. In fact, if you want an efficient lossless codec, variable bitrate is only the way to go. If you go with a fixed bitrate, this bitrate must be as high as the most complex piece of the signal needs, which means that you're not compressing the less complex pieces as much as you could.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rock&rollfrenchfries View Post

nope. it's perfectly lossless.



 

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